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I respect your opinion, and would like to know exactly what speakers those are and what amps are being used, please. They seem to be located awfully close to the back wall with no side wall reinforcements of their lower end....

Personally, my '80 Klispch Cornwalls sound very good in my set up, but they are used for whole house sound where their clarity , dynamics and bass production is great off axis and in other rooms, but even tube fronted their tone is not as accurate as through my H.P. set up.

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You are touching on another problem with speaker systems: If you want good imaging you need to move the speakers away from room boundaries, but if you want deep bass you need to use the room boundaries for reinforcement (or use some very large speakers). And introducing a sub to solve the problem throws up yet more problems. (And so on, the list of problems never seems to end when dealing with listening in normal living rooms..)

I do like blasting my speaker system throughout the house, and not really caring about dominant bass modes, sweet spot positioning, etc. I think I'll use headphones from now on for "soundstage listening" -so much simpler!

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JM Lab speakers .... 22" H x 9" W x 12" D using 6.5" bass/ mid drivers x 2 + a 1" inverted dome tweeter in MTM design/ 92 db sensitivity, Monarchy Audio SM-70 Pro .... 25 watt@ 8 ohms, single ended, Class A, zero negative feedback, mosfet power amp. I generally use a passive preamp for greater transparency .... in this pic I was using a GS-1. I prefer a low stand of 22-24", as shown, that does not interfere with the imaging.

I use a formula that uses the height of the mid driver .... which is always at about 28" fixed with my 16' stands, the distance from the side wall and the distance from the back wall to determine a good basic position to avoid room modes and response irregularities .... and then tweak from there. You effectively choose two of the parameters and determine the third parameter with this formula. Also, the speakers are not as close to the back wall as it seems in the pic because of the pics angle.

I tend to place my speakers a little closer together than most which helps with bass reinforcement between the speakers and also results in a more solid center image. I dont like a wandering center image from to wide a placement. In addition, I put the front two spikes in the speaker stand and leave the back spike off. This allows me to adjust the listening angle so the drivers have better time alignment.

The result is exceptional dynamics, bass slam galore, smooth non-fatiguing highs, a well layered and precise soundstage, a beautiful midrange tonality and presence and seamless coherency. Furthermore, I get this magic at around 78-80db average listening level and I never seem to experience ear fatigue.

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Aren't those MIT speaker cables? Don't they cost close to $2k all by themselves?

By $2k speaker system are you referring to the cost of the speakers alone?

As I mentioned earlier, I myself prefer my speaker system, so we aren't necessarily disagreeing with one another.

But I think you may be exaggerating slightly. I'm sure your system will beat a whole lot of headphone rigs, but I find it difficult to believe that it will beat 95% of the headphone rigs you've heard, in fact putting them to shame... But I guess you would know that better than I.

I think that most folks who have both speaker systems and headphone systems will tend to use their headphones when they have to, late at night etc. Most, if not all, will prefer their speakers. But to me that doesn't mean that you can't get "high end" sound out of a headphone rig.

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Very well put

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Nobody said you couldn't, detail and the like is about equal on high end speakers and headphones, the sound is still "high end". But headphones just don't have that realistic and alive sound to them that speakers do. Not even Grados. It's all about presentation.

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The whole setup cost approximately $2k .... with some parts used or demos. The MIT's are the older 750 series II. I bought the 750 series II new from AA on closeout.

E5 = $686 NEW
Pro = $675 NEW
Axiom passive = $100 USED
MIT 750 series II = $250 NEW CLOSEOUT
MIT terminator 2 IC's- 1.0M/ 1.5M = $155 NEW CLOSEOUT
PS AUDIO Lab Cable 3' $100 USED
PS Audio Ultimate Outlet $175 USED
Speaker stands 16" + JM Labs $399 NEW CLOSEOUT

Total $2585 .... and most people would not count the accessories like the power conditioning and stands, some the IC's.

Given you can get stuff for great prices used the next person with this setup will do even better. I had the Pro/ Axiom Passive up for sale for $475 shipped. I sold the speaker cables for $200. The MIT#2 will go for 110 max. The PS Audio stuff probably has bottomed out but the E5's are down around $400 shipped. Interestingly, I gave head-fi first shot at the Pro and not one response. I put the amp on Audiogon and the amp sold in 5 minutes.

Yeah, I got those exact speakers used a few years back, just wanted some decent ones for down at my cottage.

its very difficult to get the same degree of low level detail retreaval and seemless frequency integration in a speaker system. single driver headphones that are done correctly can acheive near perfect balance without any overlapping frequency bloat. each and everytime you put on a pair of headphone you are basically sitting in the "ideal" listening environment/position, and ambient noise is much less of a noisefloor factor especially with closed headphones.

as one example: if you have ever fine tuned a good TV you know that the 'brightness' adjustment actually controls the black level of the picture. if the brightness is set too high then the lowest black levels are "crushed" up to that brighter point and lost in a blob of black( or grey if you have an LCD )... you can view multi-driver speakers EXACTLY the same way.

when 2 drivers are implemented in the same speaker using a crossover network they will both be producing overlapping frequencies at some point, causing '"bloat". lets say the 6" midbass driver rolls off past 65hz but its is still producing diminishing sound down to 45hz. then the 10" bass woofer is crossed over at 50hz with some degree of slope to try to integrate seemlessly into the 6" as it rolls off. no matter how well implemented the crossover, both drivers need to produce the same frequencies in that spectrum, by design it will bloat and crush the lowest level detail... the better and usually more expensive the speaker the more seemlessly this integration. combine two/three/four drivers per speaker and complicate the crossover network further, the more engineering and testing required to get it "right" but i really dont think it can be totally fluid.
then consider individual room placement/integration/ furniture absorbtion and reflection... it gets messy. the opposite is if the crossovers are set too far apart and there is frequency gap betweeen the drivers.

ideally a single driver speaker would reproduce the entire frequency spectrum evenly. for this reason i have been using ZU Druids in my system but the 10" drivers roll off past 40hz fading the lowest level bass. deep bass is there, i can hear an amazing amount of articuation and detail, but its not as loud as the rest of the spectrum and it doesnt hit me like a nice bass punch should, but it sounds incredible, the most detailed bass i have heard. i am listneing in 14'x13' room, by adding the mini-method sub i am able to fill in that lowest octave but no matter the volume level and no matter the crossover point i set it will, to some minor degree, bloat and obscure the lower midrange where it overlaps, plus slightly diffuse the imaging and transpancy of the whole presentation...

IMHO speakers are much more of a compromise but built and positioned correctly they can sound good even considering the shortcomings. the scale of sound is incredible and imaging is so precise in a large room you are able to actually look at the placement of the sound. its easier to actually feel the sound/music.
headphones are convenient, they run on little power, can sound very 'correct', and generally cost much less. close your eyes and let the soundfield happen within your head, it becomes its own room and to some degree reproduces a the presentation of a good speaker system. IMHO headphones have their place.

The real issue is which one sounds more like real music. I dont have any doubt speakers do that best. Headphones do not image realistically and headphones do not provide the bass/ body sensation of speakers and headphones confine you. As much as I like headphones I listen to headphones because I cant listen to speakers anymore.

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thats true alot has to do with the natural crossfeed your brain receives from left and right speakers, the channel isolation of headphones cancels that natural image placement.

78-80 dbs just is not realistically loud enough for my LIVE "musicians in the room", or "you are there" experience with speakers IMO! This is a common problem with speakers also, unless much bigger investment is made than for nearfield listening, and then the room coupling becomes problematic...

As I say, I do enjoy the effect my speaker set up offers, but it has its limitations and thats where the versatility between both systems is a great cost effective compromise. However, I still belive much bigger bucks needs to be spent for realistic speaker listening with the same level of resolution at real live event believable listening dbs levels!

This is a great question......and I'd be banned from the Recording Engineer's Union (a union I made up haha) if I said I prefer most of my 300 dollar range headphones to the 80 thousand dollar genelec speakers I used at a recording studio. I even have heard custom made speakers that were being sold for half a million.

Comparing speakers and headphones is like comparing a sculpture and a painting. It really is and I'll explain what I mean. In this case the headphone is a painting and the sculpture is a speaker.

Paintings are 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional object. The brain translates the flat medium into different dynamics. This is what happens with regard to headphones. However, paintings tend to provide the viewer with a great amount of intimacy. A sculpture somehow, while more anatomically correct, does not look like real life. Paintings however, can. Paintings can look more real than a photo very often.

Sculptures are a three dimensional representation of a three dimensional object. Just like speakers........speakers provide a greater sense of depth, especially if you have a surround sound system. However, sculptures are stiff generally, and the material their made of becomes part of their essence. In other words if a sculpture is made of stone it will appear as stone in non-stone world. In a painting, the viewer forgets the paint is even there. With speakers, the listener will eventually become conscious that the music being heard is 3 dimensionally accurate but is somehow "stone" in a nonstone world......what I mean is.....it will sound like speakers, not real life. Headphones doesn't sound like real life either, but your mind will not be as conscious of this because headphones do not attempt to capture the 3 dimensions of the soundscape.

Finally, this is very important......a sculpture appears entirely different as you walk around it. The front and the back are totally different. Speakers are the same, if you move your head the sound drastically changes, if you walk towards one side of the room, the sound drastically changes. Paintings are flat (generally) and even if you stand on one side of the painting you can still understand the scope of the entire work much better than a sculpture.

Anyway.....I prefer paintings, and I prefer headphones They are more intimate and recreate sound more accurately because the room environment is non existant and therefore there is no middle man between you and the sound source.

I think that the biggest obstacle to headphones being high end may be that the program material has mostly been mixed for playback through loudspeakers. When the industry clues into the fact that much of their consumer base listen to the music through headphones this may change. Crossfeed addresses some of these issues but I think that music mixed for headphone presentation would be much more effective and better sounding.

This a great discussion, and one that I've been mulling myself since I purchased my SR-60s. Here's my experience; this may be worthwhile if only because I offer a "noob" point of view; i.e., I'm still waiting on my first headamp, and my speaker setup is mediocre at best.

In addition to my headphones (see signature), I also have a pair of Yamaha NS-555 tower speakers and a $100 Polk sub with some decent Monster (hey, it was cheap! Don't shoot!) speaker cable, run off of the receiver in my sig. Frankly, I love my system and find no reason to upgrade; it gives me full, rich sound with plenty of power. I enjoy it so much, in fact, that my entire headphone quest was to achieve a level of sound quality to rival my speakers. To that end I look forward to my incoming LittleDot MK III (thanks aphexii!), but until then I still enjoy my 0404 USB and receiver through my speakers to my HD 650s.

I admit, a lot of my love of my speakers has to do with the visceral impact, but there is just a level of clarity and airiness that I get from my speakers that I just haven't been able to achieve with headphones (again, we'll see what the LittleDot brings; can't wait!). I've also tried the 325i, DT880, and DT990, and while I enjoyed each a great deal, at no time would I choose any of them over my full speaker setup.

What I'm getting at is that it seems to be much more difficult, and often expensive, for an average consumer to achieve "good" sound out of speakers than it is with headphones. My HD 650s SHOULD be in a league of their own in my setup, far beyond the quality of my midrange consumer speakers. However, they're hampered by a less-than-perfect headphone jack on my receiver (which still sounds leagues better than the one on the 0404, just so we're clear), thus seemingly cutting them off at their knees.

I'm sure there's an even larger enthusiast movement in the speaker department with regards to synergy, receivers, room coordination, etc., and that my system would likely be outright laughed at. However, I am shocked to find that, even though I've spent countless hours poring over headphone reviews and information, I still end up preferring a "thrown-together" speaker setup to nearly top-of-the-line headphone sets. Therefore, while I expect great things with my MK III, the fact that it took as much money and effort as it has just to get to a point of equivalence is might be a cause for thought.

And that's my point of view!